Belding's Ground Squirrel
Urocitellus beldingi
Summary 3
Belding's ground squirrel (Urocitellus beldingi), also called pot gut, sage rat or picket-pin, is a squirrel that lives on mountains in the western United States. It prefers to live in higher altitudes, in alpine like meadows, where there is plenty of food, water, and not too many rocks that prevent burrowing. These squirrels live in burrows as a family unit. They are medium sized squirrels, weighing around 0.64 lbs . with a body length and tail length of 9.1–11.8" and 1.7–3.0 in" respectively. The pelage is reddish-tan on the belly, grayish-red on the sides, and reddish-brown on the back. The distal hairs on the tail tend to be black, red, and white. The best ways to distinguish between this squirrel and others that may look similar, is by seeing if you are at a high altitude meadow, with medium-low grass height. These squirrels will stay by the entrances to their burrows much like prairie dogs. They are smaller than prairie dogs, and have a more distinguished color pattern with the darker red colored band on the back (figure 1). It is hard to distinguish from tracks and scat however because of similarities to other squirrels. Figure 4 shows known areas of populations of Belding's ground squirrels. It is not currently found in Iron County, Utah. Also the nickname pot-gut can be misleading, because many medium sized rodents have come to earn the same nickname i.e. prairie dogs, and Uinta ground squirrels.
Sources and Credits
- (c) Yathin, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-ND), http://www.flickr.com/photos/36751725@N00/3590020827
- (c) Zachary Eric Mathews, all rights reserved, uploaded by Zachary Eric Mathews
- Adapted by Zachary Eric Mathews from a work by (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urocitellus_beldingi
